@article {514,
	title = {Poster: The perception of French nasal vowels by Belgian Dutch listeners},
	year = {2022},
	publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen},
	address = {Utrecht, The Netherlands},
	abstract = {Several models have been proposed to study the production and/or perception of non-native phonemes by L2 learners (cf. L2LP, Escudero, 2005; PAM-L2, Best \& Tyler, 2007; SLM-r, Flege \& Bohn, 2021). These models generally assume that the identification of L2 phonemes depends on their phonetic similarity with phonemes of the L1. In this light, the perception of nasal vowels by L2 learners is a particularly interesting subject, because unlike nasalized vowels, nasal vowel phonemes are quite rare in the world{\textquoteright}s languages. In fact, the phonemic contrast between oral and nasal vowels exists in only 22,6 \% of them (Maddieson \& Precoda, 1990). To our knowledge, little research has focused on the perception of nasal vowels by L2 learners (but see e.g., Detey \& Racine, 2015; Inceoglu, 2016). This paper aims to contribute to our knowledge of the acquisition of nasal vowels by investigating how Belgian Dutch listeners perceive French nasal vowels.~While Dutch has no nasal vowels in its inventory, present-day Hexagonal (Parisian) French has three, being /ɛ̃/, /ɑ̃/ and /ɔ̃/.

To this purpose, twenty-one native speakers of Belgian Dutch who were intermediate learners of French performed two categorization tasks, namely a cross-linguistic task and a French task. In the cross-linguistic task, participants matched French nasal vowels to their closest Dutch equivalents and rated these vowels on a category goodness scale. In the second (French) task, they classified French nasal vowels. The target stimuli were French CV and CVC sequences containing either /ɛ̃/, /ɑ̃/ or /ɔ̃/ as their syllable nucleus. Stimuli were produced by two native speakers of Hexagonal French.

The results of the French categorization task indicated that the French nasal vowel /ɔ̃/ was identified significantly more often than /ɛ̃/ and /ɑ̃/. This can be linked to a chain shift affecting nasal vowels of present-day French. Moreover, participants rarely categorized French nasal vowels as oral vowels, but displayed asymmetric patterns of confusion between French nasal vowels. Finally, the outcomes of the cross-linguistic categorization task revealed perceptual assimilation patterns that clarify the asymmetric patterns of confusion.~These perceptual assimilation patterns are discussed in the light of two theoretical models, namely the Perception Assimilation Model for L2 listeners (PAM-L2; Best \& Tyler, 2007) and the Second Language Linguistic Perception model (L2LP; Escudero, 2005).

References

Best, C.T., \& Tyler, M.D. (2007). Nonnative and second-language speech perception: Commonalities and complementarities. In: O.-S. Bohn \& Munro M.J. (Eds.), Language experience in second language speech learning: in honor of James Emil Flege (pp. 13-34). John Benjamins.~
Detey, S., \& Racine, I. (2015). Does perception precede production in the initial stage of French nasal vowel quality acquisition by Japanese learners? A corpus-based discrimination experiment. In: Proceedings of ICPHS 2015, Glasgow, 10-14 August.
Escudero, P. (2005). Linguistic perception and second language acquisition: explaining the attainment of optimal phonological categorization. PhD dissertation. University of Utrecht.
Flege, J., \& Bohn O. (2021). The revised speech learning model (SLM-r). In: R. Wayland (Ed.), Second language speech learning: theoretical and empirical progress (pp. 3-83). Cambridge University Press. 
Inceoglu, S. (2016). Effects of perceptual training on second language vowel perception and production. Applied Psycholinguistics, 37(5), 1175-1199. 
Maddieson, I. \& Precoda K. (1990). Updating UPSID. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics, 74, 104-111.~

},
	author = {De Haes, Hanna and Simon, Ellen and Lauwers, Peter}
}
@article {486,
	title = {The influence of task type and personality on EFL learners{\textquoteright} oral fluency},
	year = {2021},
	publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen},
	address = {online},
	abstract = {Main Research Questions: 
1) What are the contrasts in utterance and perceived fluency of low proficiency L2 English students between a dialogic and a monologic task type? 
2) To what extent is there a contrast in fluency between speakers as a consequence of performance features including anxiety, dominance and involvement?

Fluency is a term often used in relation to second language (L2) speaking proficiency. In general terms, most people have a notion of what the concept of fluency entails, but the literature shows that there is  no consensus on what precisely the concept might be (Pinget, Bosker \& de Jong, 2014). In the last decade, a growing number of studies have aimed at dissecting fluency by studying the difference between utterance and perceived fluency (e.g. Pr{\'e}fontaine, 2010; Bosker, Pinget, Quene, Sanders, \& de Jong. 2012), developing PRAAT scripts to measure fluency (de Jong et al. 2021) and distinguishing monologic from dialogic speech fluency (Tavakoli, 2016). 

This study aims to further advance our understanding of factors affecting L2 fluency. Specifically, we focus on the effect of task type and aspects of speaker personality. 

The study largely consists of two phases. Firstly, both the monologic and dialogic speech fluency of 33 third level L2 English students who did not pass or barely passed (10/20) an English speaking proficiency examination was analysed to instrumentally measure their utterance/objective fluency. Secondly, the ratings of 41 assessors who listened to 20 short audio tracks each were analysed and compared to the objective fluency results. The group assessing the tracks consisted of three groups of listeners: native English speakers, EFL higher education students, and bilingual speakers of Dutch and English who did not study languages at university or in college.

Results showed that in terms of objective fluency there was no positive effect on utterance fluency nor on perceived/subjective fluency for dialogic speech compared to monologic speech, contradicting previous research. Furthermore, perceived fluency results only partly correlated with utterance fluency results and listener groups seemed to differ in what manner they rated L2 speakers. Results also showed correlation between aspects of personality such as Foreign Language Anxiety and involvement, and speaking fluency. 

Further research using different tasks may further contribute to our understanding of fluency and its different components. Additionally, including open questions in the questionnaire would enable us to examine listeners{\textquoteright} ratings in a qualitative manner. 

Sources

Bosker, H; Pinget, A; Quen{\'e}, H; Sanders, T; de Jong, N. (2012). What makes speech sound fluent? The contributions of pauses, speed and repairs. Language Testing, 30(2), 159 {\textendash} 175.
De Jong N. Pacilly J. Heeren W. (2021). PRAAT scripts to measure speed fluency and breakdown fluency in speech automatically. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy \& Practice.
Pinget, A. Bosker, H. Quen{\'e}, H. de Jong, N. (2014). Native speakers{\textquoteright} perceptions of fluency and accent in L2 speech. Language Testing, 31(3), 349-365.
Pr{\'e}fontaine, Y. (2010). Differences in Perceived Fluency and Utterance Fluency across Speech Elicitation Tasks: A Pilot Study. Lancaster University Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics \& Language Teaching 2010, 134-150.
Tavakoli, P. (2016). Fluency in monologic and dialogic task performance: Challenges in defining and measuring Fluency. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 54(2), 133-150.
},
	author = {Van Mossevelde, Tom and Simon, Ellen and Chan, David}
}
